Don’t Assume Worst Of Car Dealers Opposed To Hillary Clinton Speech

Auto-dealer opposition to the choice ofHillary Clinton as keynote speaker at the NADA convention in New Orleans next year isn’t a matter of mere closed-mindedness to someone inimical to the Republican politics of most dealers. It’s not that they simply couldn’t sit still to hear a formidable articulation of some ideas that they might not like. She wouldn’t likely pick a fight anyway.

But if the speaker instead were slated to be ex-President Bill Clinton, the betting here is that his reception would be much more welcoming than hers will be.

The problem with the National Auto Dealers Association giving Hillary Clinton such a huge platform in January, about when she’ll be swinging into campaign mode for the 2016 presidential election, is that the group might as well just make a giant cash payment to her election effort. Clinton’s typical speaking fee is $200,000, though NADA wouldn’t discuss the cost of her speech to the group, citing a confidentiality clause in its contract with Clinton.

Another way of looking at it: If the inevitable favorable treatment of Clinton in any dramatized television mini-series about her life has been deemed too hot for any TV network to touch in advance of the next presidential election, why should it be any surprise that the granting of NADA’s biggest platform to Clinton is no less radioactive?

In New Orleans, the ex-Secretary of State and ex-U.S. senator will be at her entrepreneur-loving best, flattering the car peddlers for being the small-business-owning, risk-taking backbone of the American economy — and so on.

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Of course, her appearance on the dais at NADA also will give mainstream-media pundits a great opportunity to wax admiringly about how well Clinton handles herself even in the belly of the beast — “speaking truth to power,” or whatever.